18
The jungle rolled below, mile after mile of endless
green. The Cessna was heading almost due north towards Caracas,
detouring slightly to avoid the peaks of the Serrania Mapiche
mountains. The sun dropped towards the horizon, casting a golden
hue over the landscape. The explorers had left Valverde less than
an hour ago, so were not even halfway to their destination, and it
would be dark in around forty minutes.
‘Is landing at night
going to be a problem?’ Eddie, in the copilot’s seat, asked Valero.
‘Without a radio, I mean.’
‘Don’t worry,’ the
Venezuelan replied. ‘I can do it.’
‘Great.’ He looked
down the cabin. ‘How’s Ralf?’
‘Asleep,’ said Macy.
She and Osterhagen were taking it in turns to watch the injured
man, having used the plane’s first aid kit to clean and bandage his
gunshot wound. There was a good chance he would recover if he
reached a hospital.
‘What about
you?’
She grinned
half-heartedly. ‘Oh, just kinda wishing I’d worked harder in school
so I could have done a medical degree like my parents instead of
archaeology. You get shot at less that way. Even in
Miami.’
Eddie smiled, then
examined a navigation chart. Valero had earlier pointed out a
landmark: Cerro Autana, a great flat-topped mountain, standing
alone on the jungle plain. The bizarre tower was now many miles
behind them, so before long they would pass about ten miles east of
the city of Puerto Ayacucho.
He noticed something
else. Puerto Ayacucho, as a regional capital, had a fairly large
airport . . . but it was also marked as a military facility. ‘Is
this an airbase?’ he asked, pointing at the map.
‘Si,’ Valero replied. ‘That is why we are going to
Caracas. I didn’t want to land in the middle of Callas’s
friends.’
It made sense, but
Eddie was suddenly on edge. An airbase so close to the border would
serve a strategic purpose, its planes patrolling the edge of
Venezuelan airspace . . .
And intercepting
intruders.
‘Where are the
binocs?’ he demanded.
Macy found them,
concerned by his change of tone. ‘What is it?’
‘If Callas has
friends in the air force, we don’t need to land to meet them. They
can come to us!’ He looked northwest through the binoculars,
following the long sparkling line of the Orinoco until he spotted
the greys and browns of civilisation. The airport was south of the
city.
Even from this
distance, it was easy to make out a couple of parked airliners. He
was searching for something smaller, however. He panned away from
the civilian terminal to a cluster of hangars and support
buildings. Their drab functionality told him at a glance that this
was the military facility.
Something was moving
in the rippling heat. Camouflage paintwork: a fighter jet, rolling
towards the runway.
It could have been a
coincidence, the plane about to set out on a routine patrol . . .
but he wasn’t about to bet his life on it. ‘Oscar – take us down as
low as you can, and head away from the city. Quick!’
‘Why?’
‘’Cause if you don’t,
we’ll be going down in flames! They’re sending a fighter after
us.’
Shocked, Valero
banked right and put the Cessna into a steep descent. Macy pulled
her seatbelt tighter. ‘Okay, I don’t know much about planes, but
aren’t we at kind of a horrible disadvantage in this thing?’ She
gestured towards the propeller.
‘That’s why we’re
trying to stay under their radar,’ Eddie told her. ‘Most of it’ll
be pointing west, towards Colombia. We might have a chance.’
Valero’s expression, however, suggested it would be very
small.
Macy saw their shared
look. ‘Oh, great! After everything we’ve been through, we’re going
to be blown up by the Venezuelan Maverick and Iceman?’
‘We’re not going to
be blown up,’ Eddie growled. He raised the binoculars
again.
Perspective flattened
the runway against the landscape as the plane descended. Where was
the jet? He couldn’t see it. Lost in the heat distortion,
or—
It was already in the
air, a dark dart pulling up sharply atop a cone of flame from its
afterburner. Its silhouette triggered his memory of aircraft
recognition training: a Mirage 5, a French-built, delta-winged
fighter. Some versions lacked radar . . . but not, he remembered,
the Venezuelan variant.
It would find them.
Soon. ‘Buggeration,’ he muttered.
‘Oh boy,’ Macy
gulped. ‘Not good?’
‘Not
good.’
‘Shit shit
shit, why didn’t I pay attention in
biology class?’
The jet levelled out,
afterburner flame disappearing – and turned in their direction.
‘Oscar,’ said Eddie, ‘I don’t have a fucking clue how, but we’re
only going to stay alive if you can lose it.’
Valero shot him a
disbelieving look. ‘I don’t have a fucking clue how either!’ He
eased out of the dive, the Cessna only metres above the rainforest
canopy.
Macy pointed.
‘There’s a river. Maybe we could fly along it, behind the
trees.’
Again, Valero’s face
revealed what he thought of the odds of success, but nevertheless
he turned the plane to follow the river, easing back the throttle
to give himself more time to react to the waterway’s turns as he
dropped lower.
The high trees along
the bank blocked Eddie’s view of the Mirage. He felt a moment of
hope. If they couldn’t see it, it couldn’t see them – and the
fighter’s radar would also struggle to detect them through the
trees.
But all the pilot had
to do to find them was head for the river and look down to spot the
white cross of the Caravan.
Valero made another
turn. Eddie kept watching the sky. The high wing, which had made
the Caravan the ideal choice for surveying the ground, now blotted
out part of his view. How long before the jet reached them? The
Mirage was a supersonic fighter, but even at subsonic speeds it
could cover the distance in under two minutes—
Osterhagen made a
startled noise as the wingtip thwacked a branch. Eddie winced, but
there was no damage beyond a green stain on the
paintwork.
Valero slowed the
Cessna still further, holding it just above stalling speed. Even
so, the plane was still tearing through the jungle at over seventy
miles per hour. The river weaved, the rainforest rising on each
side like green walls.
Walls that were
closing in.
‘There is not enough
room,’ Valero said urgently.
Eddie was still
scouring the sky. ‘Stay low as long as you can. If it goes past us,
we might have a chance—’
‘I can see it!’ Macy
cried.
‘Is it going past
us?’
Her voice was
simultaneously angry and terrified. ‘Whadda you think?’
‘Oscar, climb!’ Eddie roared. Stealth was now worthless;
they needed room to manoeuvre. ‘Macy, what’s he
doing?’
‘Coming right at us!’
she shrieked over the engine’s howl as Valero pulled up
sharply.
Eddie finally saw the
Mirage again, sunlight flaring off its cockpit canopy. It was
approaching head-on. The Caravan would be fixed in its gunsight,
the slow-moving aircraft an easy target—
Twin flashes of fire
beneath the fighter’s fuselage. Glowing orange dots seemed to drift
towards him, but he knew all too well that the cannon fire’s
apparent laziness was just an illusion. ‘He’s firing!’ he
yelled.
Valero responded,
flinging the Cessna into a hard rolling turn. Loose items bounced
around the cabin. A loud crack came from the roof as an aluminium
panel split under the stress. Eddie lost sight of the Mirage, but
knew the shells were still incoming—
Bright streaks
flashed past the windows like meteors. ‘He missed!’ cried
Osterhagen.
‘Let’s hope he keeps
missing!’ Eddie strained to hold himself upright as the Cessna
wheeled round. The Mirage came back into view. Closer. The guns
flared again. ‘Oscar!’
Valero changed course
again, climbing . . .
Too late. Some shells
seared past – but others hit home. Two fist-sized holes exploded
through the starboard wing. Macy screamed as a piece of shrapnel
scarred the window beside her.
Valero struggled with
the controls. ‘Can you keep it in the air?’ asked Eddie, trying to
see the damage. Something was coming from the wing.
Smoke?
No. A red liquid,
sparkling in the light of the falling sun.
Fuel.
The Venezuelan saw it
too. He cursed in Spanish, eyes flicking over the instruments. ‘I
can’t stop the leak.’ The wing tank had been punctured top and
bottom by the cannon shells; no way to shut off the
flow.
‘The plane!’ Macy cried, instinctively ducking.
Eddie saw a flash of camouflage green and brown rushing at
them—
The Mirage blasted
overhead with an earsplitting scream, the Cessna crashing violently
through its wake. The jet had come in too fast, unable to slow
enough to match the weaving transport’s speed. Instead, it ignited
its afterburner with another sky-shaking roar and powered into the
distance.
Eyes wide, Osterhagen
watched it thunder away. ‘He’s leaving,’ he gasped.
‘No, he’s not,’ Eddie
replied grimly. The Mirage was making a long, sweeping turn, the
pilot about to swing back round . . . and fire a missile. ‘Can we
get to Caracas without that fuel tank?’ Valero shook his head.
‘Shit! How much fuel’s still in it?’
Valero checked a
gauge, the needle of which was slowly but steadily dropping. ‘Four
hundred litres, and falling.’
Eddie thought for a
moment, tracking the distant Mirage as it turned. ‘Head away from
him, and take us up,’ he ordered.
Valero stared at him,
confused. ‘What?’
‘Up, take us up – we
need all the height we can get!’ He unfastened his seatbelt as
Valero put the Cessna into a climb, heading northwest.
‘What are you doing?’
Macy demanded as he stood.
‘The emergency kit –
where is it?’ The yellow plastic case had contained the first aid
supplies used to patch up Becker, and more besides. He spotted it
at the back of the cabin and slid down the sloping floor to
retrieve it.
The glowing dot of
the Mirage’s afterburner cut out. ‘Eddie, the jet’s turning,’
warned Valero.
‘Just keep climbing!’
Eddie opened the case. Inside were a Very pistol and several
distress flares. He loaded one and snapped the breech closed, then
looked through the window. The fighter was coming back towards the
Cessna. ‘Okay, Oscar. Can you dump the fuel from the knackered
tank?’
‘Yes – but
why?’
‘Get ready to do it!
Level out, and turn so he’s directly behind us.’
‘But that’ll make us
a really easy targ— Oh,’ said Macy,
regarding him with sudden hope. ‘You’re going to use the flare gun
to decoy the missile!’
‘Nope,’ said Eddie,
shaking his head. ‘That only works in movies. We need something a
lot hotter!’ There was a small hatch opposite the main door; he
unlocked it and swung the top section upwards. Wind shrieked into
the cabin – along with the stench of fuel, the leaking avgas
swirling in the vortex created by the plane’s wing.
Macy’s hope was
replaced by appalled disbelief. ‘You’re going to blow up the
fuel? What happened to the whole
us-not-blowing-up thing? We’ll go too!’
‘Not if I time it
right.’ The Mirage was moving in behind them, now some miles
distant – the ideal range for a heat-seeking missile. ‘Oscar! Dump
the fuel when I say, then head for the ground.’ The jet disappeared
behind the tail. ‘Now!’
Valero, with
considerable trepidation, pulled the fuel-dump lever.
The plumes of
red-dyed avgas streaming from the holes in the wing were joined by
a much denser spray as the main valve opened. The needle on the
fuel gauge plummeted. Eddie leaned out of the open hatch, the
slipstream tearing at the back of his head as he searched for the
Mirage. The dark dot was directly astern. He readied the flare
gun—
Another flash of fire
from the jet, this time beneath a wing. A line of smoke trailed
behind a white-painted speck. A heat-seeking missile, either an
American Sidewinder or a French Magic, but it made no difference –
neither would have any trouble locking on.
The missile closed in
a sweeping arc. Travelling at over Mach 2, it would take just
seconds to reach its target.
Fuel was still
gushing from the dump valve. Eddie held his breath, feeling
droplets soaking his skin. If he fired too soon, Macy’s fear would
be realised – the igniting fuel vapour would consume the plane and
its passengers.
And if he fired too
late, they would be dead anyway . . .
The deluge stopped,
the tank empty but for the last dribbling dregs.
He pulled the
trigger.
The pistol bucked,
the flare spiralling into the dissipating red cloud. For a moment
nothing happened . . .
Then the sky caught
fire.
Flames spread like an
exploding star, greedily swallowing up the drifting fuel. Searing
tongues lashed after the Cessna, trying to reach the last morsels
in its ruptured wing. Eddie threw himself back into the cabin as a
wave of heat hit the plane.
The missile was an
R550 Magic, carrying a fragmentation warhead of twelve and a half
kilograms of high explosive wrapped in frangible steel. Its
infrared seeker was overwhelmed by the fireball, the heat source of
its target’s engine lost amidst a much bigger, hotter signal. It
ran through its programmed options in a millisecond. Target lost at
close range: only one response.
Detonate.
The missile was less
than a hundred metres from the Cessna when the warhead exploded,
sending red-hot shrapnel out in all directions. Most of the chunks
of metal hit nothing . . . but only a fraction had to strike their
target to score a kill.
The Caravan’s tail
shredded as if hit by a shotgun blast. Other sizzling shards ripped
through the wings and fuselage.
One hit Valero above
his ear, tearing away a chunk of flesh and hair. Blood splattered
the windscreen.
He slumped,
unconscious. The Cessna’s descent steepened, beginning to
roll.
Eddie slid across the
rear of the cabin as the plane tilted. ‘Eddie!’ Macy screamed.
‘Oscar’s hit!’ He hauled himself up and half ran, half fell down
the aisle to clamber into the copilot’s seat. Rows of dials and
gauges gazed meaninglessly at him. ‘One of these days,’ he gasped
as he took hold of the control yoke, ‘I’m going to learn how to fly
a fucking plane!’
He turned it like a
steering wheel in the hope that it would counter the roll. Smoke
trailing from its tail, the aircraft staggered back to a
wings-level attitude – but still with its nose pointing down at the
rainforest. The altimeter he understood, at least: two thousand
feet.
Falling
fast.
He pulled back the
yoke, trying to level out. Nothing happened, the control refusing
to move. ‘Oh, bollocks,’ he muttered as he tried again, harder. It
gave slightly, then locked again. The damage to the Cessna’s rear
had jammed the tailplanes. ‘Oh, bollocks!’
Fifteen hundred feet.
He jerked the yoke in an attempt to free it. The plane responded
slightly, producing a faintly nauseating roller coaster sensation,
but the controls remained stuck.
But to have worked at
all, they still had to be connected to the tailplanes. The problem
was a physical obstruction, something preventing them from moving.
Maybe they could be forced free . . .
One thousand
feet—
Eddie planted his
feet firmly against the instrument panel. Macy watched in
frightened bewilderment as he gripped the yoke with both hands.
‘Everyone hold tight!’ he warned as he pulled at the control,
simultaneously pushing with all the strength in his legs – trying
to force the tailplanes to move through sheer brute
force.
The yoke creaked. It
seemed to give, but only a little. He pulled harder, aware that if
he tore the handgrips clean off their mount, they were all
doomed.
Five
hundred—
‘Come on!’ he rasped, face twisted with effort. The
jungle was rapidly approaching. Three hundred feet. Every muscle
trembled as he strained. The glass of a dial cracked beneath his
foot.
Two
hundred—
Something snapped.
The yoke suddenly broke free, the tailplanes slamming upwards to
their full extent. The aircraft pulled out of its dive . .
.
Not quickly
enough.
The jungle’s tallest
trees stretched up well over a hundred feet above the ground. Even
as the Cessna levelled out, it was still heading inexorably into
the thick canopy—
Branches and leaves
disintegrated as the propeller carved through a treetop like a
chainsaw. Eddie wrestled with the controls, still trying to pull
up, but the plane hit another tree, branches clawing open the
Cessna’s skin.
The towering trunk of
an emergent redwood rose above the canopy ahead. Eddie shoved down
a rudder pedal, but even had the controls been fully responsive
there wasn’t time to turn away—
The tree scythed past
less than a foot from the fuselage’s left side, slicing off the
port wing at its root. Fuel erupted from the tank inside it as it
crumpled. The Cessna’s tail, still smouldering, hurtled through the
spray – and ignited it. The wing blew apart, an oily mushroom cloud
roiling up through the foliage.
What was left of the
plane dropped towards the ground, the mangled tail now aflame.
‘Brace!’ yelled Eddie, grabbing his
seatbelt straps and bending into a crash position—
The Caravan hit on
its belly, the impact tearing away the wheels and buckling the
hull. The propeller blades bent as they churned through the earth.
The starboard wing clipped another tree and was ripped in half, the
fuselage skidding onwards in a huge spray of soil and rotting
vegetation. The windscreen shattered, dirt filling the cockpit.
Jutting roots tore at the aircraft’s belly as it crashed over them
with a terrible screeching sound.
Which suddenly
lessened.
Eddie clung to the
straps, eyes shut tight. The plane was still moving – but the
ground beneath it was somehow cushioning its passage. The bumps
continued, but muffled, fading as the plane slowed . .
.
And
stopped.
The bent hull tipped
back with a thump. Eddie wiped away mud and cautiously opened his
eyes. They were indeed stationary. His arms ached where the straps
had cut into them, and there was a horrible bruise across his
stomach from the steering yoke. He flexed his hands, then his feet.
Nothing broken.
Valero had fared much
worse. Unconscious, he had been unable to protect himself, flailing
as the plane ploughed through the trees. Two of his fingers were
bent back at unnatural angles, and blood streaked his face where he
had hit the controls. Becker, equally helpless, had come off
better; secured in his seat, he was now slumped over the armrest,
moaning softly.
‘Ow, God . . .’ a
female voice whispered. Eddie staggered to his feet. Osterhagen sat
bolt upright, eyes squeezed shut and breathing loudly and rapidly.
Macy, meanwhile, had her head against the window,
grimacing.
Eddie staggered to
her. ‘Macy! Are you okay?’
‘I dunno . . . ’ She
tried to stand. ‘Ow, that hurts – wait, if it hurts . . . ’ She
rolled her head to clear the dazed fog from her mind. ‘I’m not
dead?’
Eddie half laughed.
‘No, we’re alive. That means I’ve survived two plane crashes in
less than a year. Fuck me! Don’t know if that means I’m really
lucky or really unlucky.’ A feeble
smile briefly turned up her lips, which he returned. ‘We need to
get out of the plane, though. Something’s burning.’ He faced
Osterhagen. ‘Doc. Doc! Can you hear me?’
Osterhagen’s eyes
snapped open, darting about wildly before settling on Eddie. ‘Where
are we?’
‘On the ground, and
that’s good enough for me. Are you hurt?’
‘Only bruised, I
think. But my neck is very painful.’
‘Whiplash, but I
doubt you’ll get the chance to sue anyone for it. Okay, you and
Macy get Ralf out of the plane. I’ll get Oscar.’
They released the
injured men from their seats and hauled them through the main
hatch. The reason for the plane’s relatively soft landing became
clear; they were in a marsh, boots sinking inches deep into the
soft muck. Eddie looked at the plane, seeing smoke curling from the
tail, then searched for more solid ground. There was a broad hump
of earth not far away. ‘Lie them down on that,’ he said. ‘Then
I’ll—’
A deep rumble shook
the rainforest. The Mirage. It was still out there.
Hunting for
them.
Osterhagen searched
the patches of sky visible through the canopy. ‘Where is
it?’
Eddie turned,
listening. The jet growl was loudest back along the channel gouged
out of the jungle by the careering plane.
And still getting
louder . . .
He glimpsed movement
above the trees to the southeast. The Mirage was circling. But not
overhead. He realised why; the exploded port wing had sent up a
column of thick black smoke.
And from a fire that
large, the pilot might assume that the entire plane had blown
up.
The Mirage came round
for another low, slow pass. Even something the size of the Cessna
slashing through the all-encompassing canopy would only have left a
small scratch; the pilot wouldn’t be able to spot more than a few
scraps of wreckage through the trees.
Or so Eddie hoped. He
waited, the engine roar growing louder. Another brief flash of
something large and deadly above . . .
And gone. The thunder
faded as the Mirage accelerated away, heading northwest. Back to
the airbase.
‘Think they’ll come
back?’ Macy hesitantly asked.
‘Not in a jet,’ said
Eddie. He carefully lowered Valero. Macy and Osterhagen put Becker
beside him. ‘They might send a chopper or a foot patrol, but I
reckon that pilot thinks we’re dead. The wing made a pretty big
bang. And speaking of which, better grab what I can before the rest
of the plane catches fire.’ He hurried back into the wreck,
re-emerging with a handful of charts, Becker’s hat, a torch and a
plastic bottle of water. ‘Couldn’t find the first aid kit – it must
have been sucked out of the hatch.’
‘So what can we do to
help Ralf ?’ Osterhagen asked. ‘And Oscar?’
‘I still think
Ralf’ll be fine if we get him to a hospital,’ said Eddie. ‘Oscar,
though . . . ’ Even a cursory glance told him that things did not
look good for the Venezuelan. The deep head wound needed
sterilising, stitches and bandages – none of which he could
provide.
He lifted Valero’s
hand to get a better look at his broken fingers – and the man
jerked awake with a scream. Macy jumped back, startled. Valero
cried out in Spanish, writhing. Eddie tried to hold him down.
‘Oscar! Oscar, stay still. You’re hurt. Don’t try to
move.’
He tried to wash a
little water over the gash above Valero’s ear, but he flinched
away. ‘Eddie, you’ve got to get to – to Caracas. Tell militia about
. . . ’ His face twisted in pain. ‘Callas. Tell them about
Callas.’
‘We can’t leave you
behind,’ Eddie insisted. ‘We’re not far from Puerto Ayacucho. We
can get you to a hospital.’
Valero shook his
head, the movement clearly causing him great suffering. ‘No,’ he
said, his voice falling to a hoarse whisper. ‘In my head, I can – I
can feel it. Something hurts, it hurts so bad. You have to—’ The
tendons in his throat pulled tight as he convulsed in agony, a
strangled moan escaping. ‘Clubhouse, Callas is at – the Clubhouse.
Stop . . . him . . . ’ Another spasm, mouth open wide in silent
torment . . . then he relaxed, his final breath softly leaving his
body.
Eddie, Macy and
Osterhagen stared at him in silence. Macy was the first to look
away, eyes brimming with tears. Osterhagen rubbed his head with a
shaking hand. ‘A burst blood vessel, perhaps . . . I don’t
know.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’
said Eddie stiffly. He reached down to close Valero’s pain-stricken
eyes. ‘We know who caused it. Callas. And Stikes. All of this is
because of them. Oscar was right – we’ve got to stop them.’ He
stood.
‘Can we really get to
this Puerto place?’ Macy asked quietly.
‘Yeah. We’re maybe
seven or eight miles away as the crow flies – but if we go due
west, we’ll get to a main road a lot quicker.’ He unrolled a chart
and showed her. ‘About four miles, a bit more. We can hitch a
lift.’
‘What about Ralf?’
Osterhagen asked.
‘I’ll carry
him.’
‘All the way?’ Macy
exclaimed.
‘I can manage. You
take this.’ He tossed her the torch. ‘Once we’re out of this swamp,
the chart says there’s no rivers and the terrain’s pretty flat, so
it shouldn’t be too bad. We’ve got less than half an hour of light
left, so we need to get moving. Doc, give me a hand.’ Osterhagen
helped him hoist Becker in a fireman’s lift. The injured man moaned
faintly, but didn’t fully wake up. ‘Okay, let’s get
going.’
Time in the cell
blurred past as if in a fever dream, the after-effects of the
poisoning lingering like a sickness. Nina drifted in and out of
consciousness, unsure whether moments or minutes had passed each
time she closed her eyes.
She felt the
swirling, clammy darkness rising to swallow her again, and shifted
her head, resting it against the metal bars for the coolness they
provided. But it didn’t last long. The awful weariness pulled at
her once more . . .
A noise startled her
into wakefulness. Two soldiers dragged Kit into the room and dumped
him back in his cell before slamming its door and leaving. Nina
pushed herself upright. ‘Kit,’ she said, her voice weak. ‘Kit, are
you okay?’
The bruises on his
face revealed that Stikes had used old-fashioned interrogation
techniques in addition to his vile little pet. One eye was
blackened, the lower lid puffy and swollen, and there was a smear
of blood down his chin from a split lip. ‘I’ve had better
hospitality,’ he croaked. ‘I . . . ’ His face suddenly twisted with
pain, and he let out a choked scream as he clutched his
chest.
‘Kit?’ said Nina,
alarm rapidly turning to fear. ‘Kit! Oh my God!’ She tried to
stand, but her legs still felt rubbery. ‘Hey!’ she shouted at the
guard. ‘Do something, help him!’
The guard gave her an
uncomprehending look, apparently not understanding English, before
turning his gaze back to the convulsing Indian . . . and doing
nothing.
Horrified, Nina
rattled the door. ‘He’s dying! Help him!’ But the soldier’s
expression remained dispassionate. Appalled, she realised what that
meant; now that he had been interrogated, Kit was expendable. She
tried to reach across the empty middle cell to him, but he was too
far away. ‘Kit!’
His moans stopped,
and he slowly raised his head to give her a pained wink with his
swollen eye. ‘It was worth a try,’ he rasped.
Nina glanced back at
the guard, who still showed no signs of understanding what was
being said, before lowering her voice. ‘You were faking?’
‘If he had opened the
door, I could have found out how well I remembered my unarmed
combat training.’
The guard was younger
and considerably beefier than Kit. ‘As much as I want to get out of
here,’ said Nina, ‘I’m kinda glad you didn’t put it to the
test.’
Kit managed a look of
mock affront. ‘Are you saying I couldn’t have taken him
down?’
‘I’m saying that I
know how I feel right now. I’d guess that you probably feel
worse.’
‘You’re probably
right.’ He slumped on the concrete floor, sweat beading his
forehead.
‘What did Stikes want
from you?’ Nina asked, hoping that conversation would help him –
and her – stay awake.
A hesitation. ‘He . .
. asked me lots of questions about Interpol. He wanted to find out
how much I had told headquarters about Callas.’ He moved his arm to
display a reddened scorpion sting. ‘He believed me when I said that
they knew nothing. Eventually. But what about you?’ he went on
before Nina could ask another question. ‘What did he want from
you?’
‘El Dorado. How to
find it.’
‘And did you tell
him?’
She looked away,
shamefaced. ‘Yeah. All about the statues, earth energy, how I used
them to find Paititi . . . everything.’
With visible strain,
Kit sat up. ‘Nina, you did nothing wrong. Nobody can stand up to
torture, however strong they think they are.’
‘Eddie probably
could.’ The thought of her husband filled her with sudden guilt;
her own suffering had pushed him from her mind. ‘Oh, God, I hope
he’s okay. I don’t even know what happened to him at
Paititi.’
‘I think he is still
alive. Stikes seems to be the kind who would enjoy telling you if
he wasn’t.’
Despite her efforts
to stay focused, the sickening tiredness was rising to swallow Nina
again. ‘I hope you’re right,’ she whispered, slumping against the
bars.
The trek westwards
was not difficult physically; the thick jungle canopy actually made
movement easier by starving the undergrowth of light. Eddie and the
others made steady, if plodding, progress.
What made it
unpleasant were the humid heat, which refused to lessen even after
the sun had set, and the insects. They were bad enough in daylight,
but once the twilight gloom forced Macy to switch on the torch they
swarmed around the light. ‘You know what?’ she complained after a
particularly huge and loathsome bug batted her in the face with its
wings. ‘Screw the rainforest! They can
bulldoze the whole place into strip malls for all I
care!’
Eventually, to
everyone’s relief, the jungle thinned, giving way to open ground
that had been subjected to slash-and-burn cultivation. Before long
they found themselves on a road – not a glorified dirt track like
those found in the rainforest, but an actual paved highway. It was
only one lane in each direction, but to the exhausted group it
seemed like an eightlane motorway. ‘Oh, thank God!’ Macy cried.
‘Civilisation! Kinda.’
There was no sign of
traffic. Eddie checked his watch; it was coming up to nine p.m.
‘Let’s hope somebody’s out at this time of night. And that
Venezuela doesn’t have laws against hitchhiking!’
They laid Becker down
beside the northbound lane, and waited. After a few minutes,
headlights appeared to the south. Eddie stood in the road and waved
for the approaching vehicle to stop. Macy joined him. ‘What?’ she
said, to his look. ‘If the driver’s a guy, he might be more likely
to stop for a hot babe, right?’
She was covered in
dirt and sweat, clothes torn, hair a ratty, tangled mess. ‘Right
now you look about as hot as I do. But maybe he likes it dirty . .
. ’
‘Shut. Up!’
The vehicle, a
beaten-up pickup truck, stopped. Macy did the talking, explaining
that they had been in a crash – she left out that it had involved a
plane to avoid awkward questions – and forced to walk through the
jungle. The driver, an elderly man, chided the yanquis for lacking both caution and survival
equipment before agreeing to take them to Puerto Ayacucho.
Osterhagen rode up front with Becker, while Eddie and Macy sat in
the rear bed.
The drive along the
empty road didn’t take long. They passed the airport, Eddie keeping
a wary eye open for military patrols, and entered the city. The
driver pulled up outside the hospital. ‘Eddie,’ said Osterhagen as
the Englishman climbed from the truck, ‘I am going to stay with
Ralf.’
‘You sure? They might
still be looking for us. Two gringos in the hospital . . . they
could make the connection.’
Osterhagen looked at
the wounded man. Becker had drifted in and out of consciousness
through the entire trek, but never been lucid enough to do more
than mumble in German. ‘He will need someone to tell him what has
been going on. Besides . . . ’ He regarded the hat he was holding.
‘He is my friend. I should be with him.’
Eddie put a hand on
the older man’s shoulder. ‘I can’t argue with that. Just be
careful, okay?’
‘I will. And you be
careful too.’ They lifted Becker from the truck. ‘What about you
and Macy? What are you going to do?’
‘Rescue Nina and Kit.
And kill Stikes and Callas. Not necessarily in that
order.’
Osterhagen’s face
suggested that he thought the latter objective a dangerous step too
far, but he said nothing. He and Eddie carried Becker into the
hospital. Macy gave a modified version of her story to a nurse to
account for Becker’s wound, the ‘crash’ now happening while fleeing
armed robbers. The story seemed to be accepted, and Becker was
taken away for treatment.
Osterhagen shook
Eddie’s hand. ‘Thank you. For keeping us alive.’
‘Shame I couldn’t do
it for everyone,’ Eddie replied glumly. ‘But look after Ralf. And
yourself. Hopefully see you both again soon.’
‘Thank you,’ the
German repeated, before following his friend.
‘So how are we going to rescue Nina and Kit?’ Macy asked
once they were outside.
The pickup driver had
waited for them, keen to learn Becker’s condition in the hope of
adding a happy ending to his tale of Samaritanism. ‘We need to get
to this Clubhouse place,’ said Eddie. ‘I doubt this bloke’ll take
us all the way to Caracas, but ask him how we can get there – if
there’s a bus or something.’
Macy did so, learning
that there was an overnight bus between Puerto Ayacucho and the
capital, with still enough time for them to catch it. ‘Ew, I hate
using buses,’ she added after reporting this to Eddie. ‘There’s
always some really gross guy trying to check me out.’
‘You want to walk
three hundred miles?’
‘Depends how gross
the guy is.’
‘Can’t be as gross as
those bugs. Ask if he’ll give us a lift to the bus station. Oh, and
if there are any payphones there.’
‘Yes, and yes,’ she
said after posing both questions. ‘Who are you planning on calling?
Someone in the government we can warn about Callas?’
‘I would if I knew
who to call, but I don’t – and I don’t know who we can trust,
either. If Callas is planning a coup, he’ll need more than just the
military on his side. He’d have to have people in the militia too.
They’re the biggest threat to him.’
‘Except for
you.’
Macy had meant it as
a joke, but the smile Eddie gave her had a very hard edge. ‘Yeah.
Except for me.’
They got back into
the pickup and set off. ‘So who are you
going to call?’ Macy asked.
His smile this time
was somewhat warmer. ‘An old friend.’